If you’re a photographer, an Orthodox wedding can prove to be tricky.
That’s what Yury Kopansky, a photographer who relocated to the Bay Area from the former Soviet Union 15 years ago, will say.
Recently hired to shoot an Orthodox wedding at the Presidio’s Officers Club in San Francisco, Kopansky laments, “It was very hard to get the bride and groom together for pictures.
“It was absolutely not allowed for the bride and groom to be together before the chuppah ceremony,” says Kopansky of the 300-person wedding. But after the ceremony, I had just 15 minutes to get a couple of shots of them together, before they split into separate rooms for the male and female receptions.”
While older or more conservative Jewish couples often hire photographers to take traditional and romantic portraits like Kopansky’s style at their weddings, photographers agree that nowadays, younger Jewish couples are opting for less-posed and more natural-looking pictures.
Sometimes that takes the form of a more photojournalistic, spontaneous behind-the-scenes look. Other times, it takes a fashion-editorial approach, in which the couple is loosely directed by the photographer, resulting in a look à la Vogue and other fashion magazines.
Gideon Boaz, a Bay Area photographer who recently relocated to New York City, explains that for Jewish couples “it is a generational thing” when it comes to hiring a wedding photographer for the look they want.
“Generally speaking, a younger couple is open to all suggestions, like ordering photojournalistic prints and also an album with digital prints in which images of different sizes and colors are juxtaposed,” Boaz explains. “Also, the younger clients are savvier when it comes to digital photography. They know what’s out there and they know what they want.”
Boaz adds, “However, if there is a lot of involvement from the bride or groom’s parents, they might go with something more traditional.”
More traditional wedding photography might be more akin to what one would find in your parents’ or grandparents’ albums: Set-up photos with all faces looking at the camera. A photojournalistic approach, on the other hand, is more spontaneous and dramatic, without staged shots or posed sessions.
Without having a photographer tell them what to do and when to do it, the bride and groom can virtually forget that the photographer is there, and simply be themselves. The result: images that reflect that.
Recently, Boaz flew to Mexico for a three-day interfaith wedding between an black bride and a Jewish groom, in which many Jewish traditions were incorporated. Boaz fondly recalls that after the ceremony under the chuppah, he had the chance to join the couple for a boat ride to the reception, in which he was free to continue shooting without the distraction of the other guests.
“They actually hired two photographers with very different styles,” Boaz says about the interfaith wedding. “I did a photojournalistic style, and the other photographer had a fine arts approach, taking lots of shots that looked like still life.”
Keeping up with modern-day technology, the couple ordered CD-ROMs from both photographers after the wedding, and no actual prints.
Asked about his style, Boaz adds, “I always look at photography as a dance. There is a creative process between the subject and photographer.”
His style caught the eye of Daniella Kopstein, 27, who married Alex Fisher, 28, on Nov. 8 in San Francisco. “We spent a lot of time making sure our wedding was true to, and unique to, us. Therefore, we sought a photographer who was familiar with the Jewish community/Jewish customs and weddings, and could help to tell the story of the wedding,” says Kopstein.
“Having someone Jewish and familiar with Jewish customs was very important to us. However, I think we were only Gideon’s fifth or six wedding, which appealed to us as well that he was out of the commercialized wedding business and felt more like a professional photojournalist than a mainstream wedding photographer,” says Kopstein, the regional political director for AIPAC.
Another young bride who stayed clear of the traditional photographers was Mariana Roytman. She and Daniel Schiffner, both age 25, married Sept. 7 at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco Roytman is the marketing director of the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education and Schiffner is a medical student at UCSF.
“I hate those!” Roytman responds when asked why she had not wanted the traditional, romantic wedding shots. “The photos were the most important part of the wedding for me. As a kid, my favorite thing to do was to look through my parents’ wedding album.”
After interviewing many photographers, she chose Sausalito-based Jere Visalli, whom her sister and brother-in-law used at their wedding. Moreover, because Roytman photographs as a hobby, she was very particular about wanting a photographer who would take candid, natural photos.
For example, in one of her favorite photos, one of her bridesmaid’s is buttoning the back of her wedding dress before the ceremony. In her favorite family photo, her mother is smiling approvingly at Roytman, whom you can barely see in the background. And the dancing photos at the reception are especially significant for her because the newlyweds took months of private dance lessons. During their three-minute first dance — which was “Your Song,” by Elton John — they wowed the crowd with the rumba and the fox trot.
Lauren Yuré also sought a more photojournalistic style for her wedding to Benjie Kushins on Aug. 23 in Healdsburg. “Being an artist, black-and-white and other creative photos were a high priority,” says Yuré, owner of Art Reflections, which offers art for sale as well as art instruction.
“The pictures turned out beautifully,” says Yuré of photographer Tiffany Lucas’ work. “We gave Tiffany a list of the events and people we wanted photographed and left the rest to her discretion. She checked off every item on our list plus some.”
Yuré loves the more artsy shots, such as the candid shot of her mother putting on Yuré’s lipstick. And, Lucas took a rather risque photo of Yuré getting dressed with her bridesmaids, a photo “just for Benjie.
“No one else has seen it … but it still brings a smile to my face knowing I have it,” she says.
One recently married middle-aged couple from Menlo Park, however, is proof that younger couples aren’t the only ones opting for more natural-looking photography at their weddings.
“Maybe that’s because I’m an artist,” explains Devora Weinapple, 45, who married Richard, 48, on Aug. 31 at the San Francisco Film Center at the Presidio. “I’m a painter and a graphic designer, and I also take photos. I just don’t like the traditional stiff poses.”
Weinapple’s husband, a software engineer, went along with her decision. After browsing various photography Web sites, Weinapple preferred the style of Palo Alto photography team Joyce Perlman and Randy Lutge. “I appreciate good art,” she says.
Looking over the photos Perlman had just dropped by, Weinapple says, smiling, “The dancing pictures are my favorite.”
Indeed, dancing shots are the very ones that Perlman finds the toughest to capture.
“The challenge with shooting wedding dance is to get the feel of the motion and swirl without being out of focus,” Perlman explains. “Jewish dancing has the warm feel of family, friends and history, capturing the culture. The handheld circles that surround and envelop the newlyweds, the chairs that lift and celebrate the whole new family, the music, all express the celebration of life.”
Perlman and Lutge describe their photography as cinema vérité, a style of filmmaking that attempts to convey candid realism. They use a variety of equipment, such as 35mm, medium-format and digital cameras.
“We try to imitate some of the French real-life photographers. We do both formal and photojournalistic styles,” Perlman says.
Most Jewish brides and grooms request that Perlman and Lutge capture the traditions of their weddings, such as the ketubah signing, breaking the glass and circling around the groom. “Generally, just the female circles the male, but nowadays, a lot of people do both genders to be more contemporary,” Perlman adds.
In one Oceanside wedding shot featured on their Web site, a newly married couple takes a solo stroll, the bride’s veil blowing in the wind as the bride and groom’s shadows follow alongside them. Many of Perlman’s wedding pictures combine the ceremony with nature, as the fog descends in the background or a huge tree trunk emerges behind the couple. There is no artificial shine from studio or flash lighting.
It’s those kind of moments when a photojournalistic style shines, allowing the photographer to tell a story about a memorable day.
Perlman says that she appreciates the fact that Jewish dance music is thousands of years old, and has been played at countless family gatherings.
She adds, “The resultant images are often expressive of the joy and weight of this long history.”
But even with all the new wedding photography style, there is one traditional shot that still gets taken no matter what: the group shot.
Most couples still find it important, the photographers say, not only for themselves, but for their families, especially their parents and grandparents.
“We had very few — about 15 — posed photographs with family members, about an hour prior to the guests’ arrival,” says Kopstein. “Other than those, [we] told Gideon to simply take those pictures he felt would best represent the spirit of the two of us and of the evening.”